Slashdot Mirror
WoW Players Targeted By Windows Flaw Exploit
grimwell writes "The BBC is carrying the story that the ANI flaw is being used to target World of Warcraft players, as hackers search for account details. 'Analysis of that malicious software showed that it lay dormant on a victims machine until they ran World of Warcraft (WoW) at which point it captured login data and sent it to the hacking group ... Research by security firm Symantec suggests that the raw value of a WoW account is now higher than a credit card and its associated verification data.'" Doubtless, any compromised accounts would quickly see their equipment sold, and the resulting gold transferred to another account. This gold would then be sold for US currency to Real Money Traders like the company IGE.
World of Warcraft is considered a better target for theft than a credit card. What kind of nerds are running those crime syndicates these days? Maybe if Blizzard came down on more of these gold-selling, account-selling, and item-selling service providers, this kind of nonsense wouldn't even be an issue.
Blerg.
That would render the wow economy useless... You would only be able to buy from npc's and not from other players.
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While I'm no fan of gold farmers and in-game currency traders, is there any evidence to justify naming IGE in that addendum? What justifies that?
Is there some sort of big warning popup in WoW for players as they start the game up? (prior to entering a username/password)? I know that Guild Wars has special "news items" alongside the login form that you can read without having to actually log into your account. It would be cool if Blizzard (heck, and ArenaNet) had a giant warning that came up for the next few days informing people of this issue and of the upcoming fix from MS (or am I confusing my vulnerabilities/fixes here?...). That might help folks out perhaps.
I like basketball!!1!
Well, if you could un-soulbind it, then that would probably be a good idea. Also, if you wanted to get rid of some sole binded gold, you could just buy an item, and then sell the item to another character.
Great, so now only someone who has access to my account can steal my gold and items! That solves everything!
Almost all equipment in WoW becomes soulbound when equipped. Some items become soulbound when you pick them up. I would imagine that account hackers just sell these items to NPC vendors.
I just hope no one ever figures out a way to do this with Slashdot accounts. If WoW accounts are more valuable than credit cards, then Slashdot accounts must be more valuable than, I guess, say Dilithium Crystals or Ewok slaves. I think I have finally going to have to upgrade to Windows98 from Windows95. It probably is mature enough at this point.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
What Microsoft should have done, instead of investing significant amounts of its own resources into the security patch, was tether a huge, yellow exclamation point over the Redmond campus. Wayward WoW players would be inexorably drawn to it where they would find a Non-payroll Personnel Coordinator (NPC) who would relate to them the details of the bug and why it needs to be fixed. Harvesting the collective zeal of the WoW community in such a fashion, the solution to the issue would have been presented to Microsoft promptly and at little expense. Patch notes could even be copied and pasted directly from the resulting Wowwiki page.
Incidentally, I plan to use a similar process to reduce the amount of manual labor around the home.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Sure...
Many games I play in WINE lack the bugs they have in windows.
Ex: Due to DirectX errors, Master of Orion 3 is virtually unplayable in Windows, where as it's flawless in WINE.
Also, WINE isn't involved in my web browsing or email.
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Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Soulbinding is for items only, which can still be (rare cases, not withstanding) sold to the vendor for gold. Gold cannot be soulbound. Which is why, on hacked accounts, the person is left naked and pennyless. Everything in liquidated into gold and the gold is transferred to another.
However, that is really a interesting idea. How would a game economy handle the idea of no inter -player trade? I would find that an interesting concept to test out. The game would have to be designed where 'all players are equal' in a sort. Everyone could craft any item (or require that you can only get crafted items from NPC vendors). Killing a monster and looting would give full value of money and items to everyone. (A monster drops 10 gold and all 5 players who killed it get 10 gold each. as well as a copy of the weapon or armour it dropped). Heck, a monster would no longer even NEED to drop items. They can just drop money and (as WoW is turning too) special tokens which can be exchanged for items at the high-end.
It would remove an 'economy', for whatever a virtual economy is worth (as technically, everything is limitless). Though I know a lot of people like the idea of 'trade' (I'm one of them), the real question is, does a 'game' really need it? I guess this is close to how Guild Wars works when you only play with NPCs. All items dropped are given to you and gold is reduced by the number of NPC party members. While some items can be dropped from monsters that you use, often find that armour is crafted for you by NPCs who require crafting materials you salvage from item drops and some gold. In essence, it's kind of like only getting gold from monsters.
Do so, does take something away from the 'feel' of the game, but it also can add to the 'work' of the game and I often find this adds to my own 'burning out'. Tough choice, but I like the idea and would like to see how people reacted to a game once they've played it fully.
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Same applies to same-faction trading. In order to really stop gold changing hands, you would need to remove the auction houses. It would also render a lot of the profession system useless because you couldn't do enchants/crafting and get a fee.
Have you played WoW?
It would be nice if there was some equivalent to the "rested XP" bonus once you've reached max level; some benefit that casual gamers would receive for not being online all the time. I'm sure the hard-core people would whine about it, but I doubt many of them would quit over it (as long as it wasn't some outrageous benefit).
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
If you're truly looking for something closer to reality, then perhaps you should check out LARPing
-- jchenx